Chapter Text
“Delgado, are you going to suit up and join us?” Commander Shepherd asked the elderly assassin, who had been reading a serial the entire time she and Tristan were suiting up.
Delgado turned the page before answering. “No, there’s a snowstorm coming.”
“Were you going to mention that at any point?”
“I wanted to see how far into getting dressed you’d get before noticing.” Delgado replied with a wry smile.
Shepherd looked over at Tristan - he was fully suited up, standing at attention, the head of his hammer resting on the floor and his hands atop the handle - a pose she’d seen on several propaganda posters.
The commander herself was just missing her helmet, and had only noticed Delgado wasn’t prepared when she went to put it on. She couldn’t help but feel she had failed some sort of test, again.
“How bad is the storm going to be?” Shepherd asked, suppressing an irritated sigh.
“Bad enough.” She replied, turning the page.
“Wait, Is that one of my serials?” Shepherd said, walking over to look. It was- episode three of Knights of Temperance - she had brought the entire collection with her, and kept it under lock and key.
“Yes - one of the best ways to understand your compatriots is to understand the literature they prefer, don’t you think?”
Shepherd rubbed an irritated hand over her face. “Don’t judge me for what happens in episode six, alright?” She turned to Tristan. “Do you want to go play in the snow or do you want to scrub the mission?”
“I would prefer not to play in the snow, but if you are moving forward with the mission I will be right beside you.” He replied.
She would have to teach him how to make a snowman. It would be enrichment for him.
“I must really suggest that you both stay here.” Delgado said, making no real attempt to dissuade them
“Noted, Delgado. This mission will be continuing as planned without you.” Demanding that Delgado suited up for a probable firefight in a snowstorm was not how she wanted to die. Instead, she turned to Tristan. “Let’s get this done quickly so we can argue over the ship's supply of hot water, okay?”
“Considering that my showers take a routine 7.5 minutes, it would be prudent to assign me the first shift, leaving you ample time to take your lengthy shower with no one else in queue.”
There was a joke on her lips about how showering together would save time and water, but she could just hear him explaining how a second body in the small shower would cost him 3.2 valuable minutes, minimum. So instead she hit the airlock button and led him out into the frozen world.
As they trudged through the silent snow together, the thought occurred to her that this was likely another one of Delgado’s attempts to matchmake her and Tristan. Setting them up to have dinner alone had only ended in them getting banned from the only bar in Fairfield, so naturally sending them out to crack some skulls together was the next best thing.
The probability of their success came out cleaner with Shepherd and Tristan happily, romantically involved, or however Delgado had put it.
There was a miscalculation in her plan, however. When on a mission, Tristan was on a mission. He wasn’t interested in small talk that wasn’t relevant to mission objectives. Not that the commander minded, if she wanted to jaw the entire way she would have grabbed Leitenger or Silang. No, she had selected Tristan and Delgado in order to quickly travel to the objective, acquire the missing audio log, and get back to the warm ship as quickly as possible. She hated this frozen nightmare world and the less time she had to waste on its surface, the better.
Three earth miles through their ten Earth-Mile hike, it started to snow. Visibility was low and getting worse by the time they reached the halfway mark.
“We’re 5 miles in.” Shepherd said, looking up at the snowy incline between them and their goal. “Do we return to the ship or get this over with?”
Tristan’s measured footsteps stopped right beside her. “It would be a waste of the time we’ve already spent to turn around now. The Excogitation Chapel will presumably have a working heating system; we can wait out the rest of the storm there.”
“That, and Delgado is going to say I told you so.”
“That may have also factored into my calculations.” He replied.
“No calculations, I’m not losing you to the math cult. Come on.” She trudged forward into the drifting snow, keeping a careful eye on the map screen she had pulled up on her datapad.
Seven miles in, and they lost GPS signal.
“Shit.” Shepherd said, smacking the datapad with one hand in hopes of getting it going again.
No signal. The screen read. Showing last known coordinates.
“It’s mostly a straight shot from here.” Shepherd said, looking up from the map into the swirling white ahead of them.
“We are just as likely to get lost going one way or the other at this point.” Tristan replied. “Forward should get us out of the snow faster.”
She nodded. “You doing okay in there? I know you said your armor isn’t optimal for these temperatures.”
Tristan hadn’t complained, but she knew he hated the cold as much as she did.
“I prepared for the mission with several layers of extra clothing.” He replied. “I presume you did the same.”
She held back a joke about wanting to snuggle for warmth. Even if Tristan looked like the biggest teddy bear she had ever seen, she didn’t think he’d appreciate being called one, even after all of the emotional soul-searching he had been doing lately. Maybe in a few years, after things calmed down, he would be the kind of person that could take a joke about snuggling.
“I’m as prepared as I can be.” She said instead.
“Let me lead the way for a while.” Tristan recommended. “If you follow behind me, you’ll be safe from the worst of the wind.”
She opened her mouth to argue - she was the commander, she led the team - but he made a good point.
“Good plan. After you then.”
Following Tristan through the snow was significantly more comfortable than the other way around. With the snowplow of a man leading the way, they were making significantly better time. For a moment, she believed this was going to be a normal mission.
Famous last words, as always.
They didn’t see the attack coming, but they wasted no time fighting back. The commander’s trigger finger was reliable even under three layers of gloves, and Tristan’s hammer was as reliable as the man who wielded it. It should have been a simple skirmish, just one more thing between them and their goal, except-
“Commander! On your right!”
She smacked the button for her shield and focused her attention back on her target, realizing far too late that she hadn’t brought the shield - she had brought her Tactical Time Dilation Device. The rocket slammed into her shoulder in slow motion, and she felt every second of the explosion expanding out into what felt like an eternity. She felt her shoulder split open, molten metal burning her skin, synthetic and organic nerves screaming as her prosthesis shattered.
Cold flooded in as she fell to the ground, the snow flying up around her as the device ran out of power and finally turned off. Time returned to a normal pace, sickeningly fast as she searched for her emergency inhaler attached to her belt.
The bitter taste of oxymorphone slapped her like a double shot of lemon peels in rubbing alcohol, numbing her throat and quickly spreading through the rest of her. Struggling to hold her gun in her blood soaked glove, she was thankful yet again to be a lefty as she fired off in the direction the rocket had come from.
She was shaking, and her shots went wide, but it was enough of a distraction for Tristan to catch up to the last of their attackers, adding them to the collection of bloody Rorschach inkblots in the snow.
“Commander!” Tristan was peeling off his gloves as he ran, dropping to his knees in a puff of snow in front of her. “What’s your status? What do you need?” He reached out to help but it was clear he wasn’t sure where to start.
This wasn’t the first time she had lost this arm, but blood loss didn’t care about experience, and she stuttered for a response. “M-medic. Heat. They got me good.” She touched her bleeding shoulder stump gingerly. The metal couplings were twisted and shorn, her skin a battlefield of shredded muscle and broken metal.
“I’ll call the ship.” He said, pulling out his communicator.
No Signal. The screen read.
Tristan swore, grabbing the communicator off the commander’s belt.
No Signal. The screen read.
“Unacceptable.” He barked, pressing the rescan button several times in a row. He held the communicator up to the sky, standing to his full height in an attempt to find a signal, before throwing it down angrily into the snow.
Was Tristan.. Panicking?
No, Tristan didn’t panic. He was always the cool head of the operation, even when her own faculties failed. He was fine, and they would be fine.
“Tristan.” She said weakly. “Tristan!”
He wasn’t hearing her. Great, she was bleeding out and it was Tristan who was melting down.
“Arbiter Rao, report!”
He blinked once, twice, and came back to life.
“Orders, commander?”
“Help me stop the bleeding.”
“Yes, commander.” He dropped back to his knees beside her, pulling out his pack and rifling through it.
“There’s a medkit in my pack, there-” She went to point with her non-existent hand and hissed in pain, her vision going black as the remaining functional nerves moved what was left of her metal arm, deepening the problem and sending a fresh rush of hot blood down her side.
She forced herself to stay conscious, biting back a scream as she pointed with her good arm at the pack lying in the snow. He grabbed it immediately, kneeling in front of her again.
She grabbed his hands with her good one before he started. “You can NOT pull out the broken couplings here.” She stared directly into his eyes to make sure he was paying attention. “They’re screwed into my bones and wired into my nervous system. Just wrap around it as best you can.”
He nodded his understanding, and pulling off his helmet for visibility, he set to the task with practiced hands. Completely ignoring her poorly suppressed whimpers of pain, he had the worst of the bleeding stopped in record time.
Arbiters weren’t known for their bedside manner for a reason, she supposed, but he did get the job done. Now all she had to do was remember not to use that arm.
Like she had said last time, at least she was a lefty.
“Orders?” He said again once she was bandaged up.
“Gather our gear and help me to my feet.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Shepherd attempted to take a step and immediately regretted the decision, falling backwards into the snow.
“Damn it.” She looked up at Tristan, nearly invisible despite being within remaining arm’s reach of her. “Can you carry me? The chapel should be somewhere around here.”
“Easily.” He replied, and stood there, waiting for orders. He was entirely in instinct mode, and his instincts said not to act until an actual order was given. Fantastic.
“Tristan, carry me then.”
“Right. On it.” He knelt down and scooped her up, holding her against his armored chest. Her teeth chattered, and if she didn’t need to stay in commander mode to keep Tristan going, she wasn’t sure she would still be conscious.
“If we follow the bodies, we’ll likely find the chapel.” She instructed. “Watch out for more combatants.”
Something made a sound in the trees and Tristan drew his pistol and fired three shots, still holding Bri against his chest with his other hand.
“I didn’t know you even carried a sidearm.” She noted.
“It is paramount to be prepared in any combat situation.” He replied, sounding more like he was parroting a training manual than usual.
She was making him undergo a full mental assessment when they returned to the Incognito, and she wasn’t hearing any arguments this time.
Another sound. Three shots.
The snow let up for a single, blessed moment, the chapel in sight. Tristan broke into a run and Bri gritted her teeth against the pain. Heat, safety, soon. They could use the comm system there to signal the ship.
Snow was piling on the floor of the chapel in front of the open door, and the insides had been thoroughly ransacked. Still, it had four sturdy walls. They could make do.
She ordered Tristan to set her down next to the comm system.
Offline. The screen read. Critical system damage.
The shock was wearing off, and her shoulder was bleeding again. She pressed her remaining hand tight against the wound and let out a strangled cry of pain, another fast on its heels.
She tried to bring herself back under control, but the pain and frustration hit her in waves.
That would not do. She had to focus, she had to get them both out of this.
A single thought formed in her brain.
“Inhaler.” She rasped, reaching for where hers should have been on her belt. If she could get her pain under control, she could get this situation under control.
Tristan unclipped his own, pressing it to her face with a heavy hand on the activator.
She tried to stop him, but he was far too fast on the draw. A full arbiter sized dose of bitter medication burned her lungs and quickly turned her brain to jelly. She felt the crash coming, bearing down on her like Tristan’s hammer on a rabid rapt. She grabbed onto his wrist and tried to wrench the mouthpiece away, to force herself to maintain consciousness, but she slumped forward all the same, bleeding out onto the broken comm system.
Tristan dropped the inhaler as soon as he realized what he had done.
He pressed his fingers to the commander’s neck, feeling for a pulse. For a moment, he felt nothing, save the pounding of his own heart. He calmed himself, checked again. Pathetically weak and irregular, but it was there.
He reminded himself that had seen the commander ‘Crash’ once before. Abara had told him it was ‘relatively normal’ and to ‘cover her and wait a couple minutes’.
Damned thing it was anyway. Arbiters did not carry pain medication, but the Corporatist had insisted he take one as well, ‘in case someone else needed it’. Which made sense! Except! The medication was metered out by weight and Tristan was easily the largest member of the crew. Why had it been calibrated for him, who would never use it, and not for a smaller member of the crew - like the rift cultist, who the commander had stated was ‘One hundred pounds soaking wet’.
The commander’s breathing was shallow and her skin pale, but he had no choice but to expect she would wake up soon. For now, he needed to stop the bleeding again.
Tristan was not a medic. He was an Arbiter. But as such, he could do anything. He would patch the commander back up. She would be stable until help arrived, and then he could give the Corporatist a stern talking to. Without his hammer. Because he had promised.
Laying his commander across his lap, he began to peel the bandages away from the commander’s skin, studying the events of the mission so far to figure out where they had gone wrong. The leaving behind of the Order Purist had been acceptable, and the march had been without incident up until the attack. An attack had been expected, but the when and the where had been a mystery. Visibility had been minimal in the snow, being blindsighted was unfortunately within acceptable parameters.
Tristan did not relish having blood on his hands, at least in the literal sense. He wore gloves for a reason, but the work of removing bandages required precision that his heavy gloves did not allow. He was delicate around the couplings - he was not well read on the inner workings of prosthetic limbs, but he knew enough not to attempt removal even without the commander’s stern warning.
The fact she thought he needed to be warned at all was troubling. Something was missing from his memory. He remembered warning her of danger, and he remembered standing over her in the snow while she yelled his name. He did not remember her getting hit, or her falling into the snow. The memory of bringing her into the chapel was unclear as well.
The way she had called him Arbiter Rao, rather than her usual Tristan, was a clue. Commander Shepherd was very particular about names, always calling the crew by titles and surnames. In fact, Tristan did not even know what the commander’s first name was. But she called him Tristan.
It should have irritated him - no, infuriated him. It did not.
It was difficult to bandage the commander’s shoulder when she was passed out like this. She wasn’t heavy, but the human body was unwieldy when unconscious and if the couplings in her shoulder moved even a fraction of a fractioned unit, she would bleed again.
She was very lucky that he was very good at everything he did. Had she taken another member of the crew on this mission, her life would be lost for certain.
The next matter of business was setting up an acceptable place for her to recover. A cot in the living area of the chapel provided exactly that, and he was cognizant of her shoulder when he lay her down. He noted that her entire right side wasn’t just peppered, it was seasoned liberally with shrapnel. That would have to be removed sooner rather than later. But first he would clean the blood from his hands. Then he would attempt to communicate with the ship again.
The commander’s communicator was missing from her person, likely lost in the explosion. He found his own in his pocket.
No signal. The screen read, in the living area.
No signal. The screen read in the main chapel.
No signal. The screen read standing outside in the snow.
No signal. The screen read across every inch of the chapel.
He would try again later. It was time to check on the commander.
She was still unconscious, but had not bled through her bandages again. This was a good sign. The first time had been a quick field dressing, this time he had taken far more care and it would hold.
Seeing her in this state gave him a feeling in the pit of his stomach that he did not like- and worse still, that he did not understand. Tristan was very familiar with death and injury. Mostly, he was good at causing death and injury to enemies of the Sovereign, but he had also seen comrades in bad and worse states.
Not every young recruit becomes an arbiter. The ways his classmates had died were myriad and unfortunate, but they had died in service to the Sovereign. Their deaths were a learning opportunity that Tristan had studied avidly. Because of this, he had survived.
Virgil might have understood why he was feeling this way.
Not for the first time, he wished his friend had joined him on this mission. With the two of them working in tandem, he would not have needed to throw in his lot with the uncalculable variable that was Commander Shepherd and her.. Crew.
She whimpered in her sleep, and Tristan knelt down - to check on her, to comfort her? There was nothing he could do about her unconscious discomfort. More oxymorphone would make the problem worse, not better. Still, he rested his hand on her undamaged shoulder, and that seemed to calm her.
Were he in the habit of giving tactical advice to probable enemies of the Protectorate, he would have sent the Earth Directive a full dissertation on the benefits of desensitizing their soldiers against pain. Panicking and screaming was no way for a commander to act.
He returned to the main room where he had dropped the majority of their gear, bringing both the med kits into the smaller room with him. The commander’s kit was filled with Auntie’s choice garbage, and he set it aside. He would have a talk with her about getting the crew outfitted with better supplies. While the Protectorate was still erroneously labeling him a traitor and a deserter, he was certain he could still requisition necessary supplies, given the right circumstances.
Leaving the commander’s side once again, he checked on the heating and electrical systems. He was not a medic, and certainly not an electrician, but he did not need to be skilled in the trade to know that the heating system could not be relied upon for long.
Systems critical, shutdown imminent. The display screen for the heating system read.
The electric was a similar story.
Emergency Power Supply: 16%. The screen read. Less than twenty hours remaining.
He looked out the window, where the snow was still falling fast and heavy. Cloister was an ice moon, with storms that were difficult to track and predict. The storm could fizzle out in the next hour, or it could continue for days.
In her current state, Tristan knew the commander did not have days. Her blood loss was severe and while she would self-stabilize temporarily after a crash, she needed the kind of medical care that couldn’t be packed in a small kit. If she didn’t start bleeding again, and if her condition stayed stable enough, and if a lot of different factors stayed exactly perfect, she had maybe 24 hours.
He did not like this information.
It would not do to be upset with the information. His feelings on the matter did not change what was true. Yet there he was, angry, because he could not change the weather on Cloister or add fresh blood to Shepherd’s veins.
He would just have to find something he could do.